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Category talk:Authors
Author Categories and Characters Should author avatars be in their respective author's category? Should the view-point characters? Currently it seems to be a bit inconsistent and I'm not sure whether that is because we simply didn't get around to adding the author categories to all character pages that should have them or because there is no consensus on which character pages should have them. Addiab 23:12, May 29, 2010 (UTC) I'm not sure what you mean. Author avatars are the Lit Chix, aren't they? As for "viewpoint characters," well, that's a pretty fuzzy classification. Many characters have been the POV at one time or another, including a few who don't even rate "secondary" status. --Sir Lee 02:01, May 30, 2010 (UTC) Mostly, but Chaosdancer doesn't seem to be (yet). As for viewpoint characters, ok, that's not exactly the right word, but main characters isn't either, Hank arguably being a main character and Greasy or Beltane not. But what I was asking was which sort of characters should be in the categories. take Bek. Which of these articles should be in Bek's category? Chaka, Foxfire, She-Beast, Seraphim, Stacy Conrad, Three Little Witches (clique), Abracadabra, Palantir, Clover, Reach, Beltane, Sahar, Zenith, Spark, The Spy Kids, individual Spy Kids members, the Wild Pack, individual Wild Pack members, the Anti-Paladin, everyone else known to have been created by Bek (like the three cheerleaders outside the core group), very likely to have been created by Bek (pretty much everyone who isn't known or strongly suspected to have been created by someone else), the weird cases like Oscar Bardue (created by Bek, then apparently adopted by J. G.?) or even Compiler and Liefeline (co-created by Bek)? Everyone up to Beltane seems best to me, but I could see arguments for another selection. Addiab 10:24, May 30, 2010 (UTC) I'm not at all sure what you mean by this. It's not information I'm interested in -- it adds nothing but complexity from my viewpoint. I don't remember which Lit Chick is whose, other than Murphy is obviously J.G.'s, and that's because the personality stands out.XaltatunOfAcheron 12:33, May 30, 2010 (UTC) So you would prefer no characters at all in the author categories? I most certainly have no issues with that, my only issue was with the current inconsistency, and I would never even have even have mentioned the possibility of adding characters to the author categories if it hadn't already been done by others, albeit inconsistently. I don't get why both of you failed to understand what I meant? Should I have mentioned that are are currently characters in the author categories? I can't see how my first post can be read other than clearly implying that. Or that "none" is a possible answer to "which"? Addiab 12:47, May 30, 2010 (UTC) As others have said, although author X may have created character Y, it's entirely possible author Z has actually written more text regarding the character, both from the character's own PoV and from the PoV of other characters interacting with them. So how about, as a minimum, we start with the focal characters of a particular author's stories (e.g. Anna and Ayla for Diane; possibly include Fractious, but she's more tentative as Diane hasn't written much about her.) As a counter-example, the individual Lit Chix may have been created by their namesake authors, but E.E. tends to write about them far more often than anyone else. If we just keep it to the central, focal / protagonistic characters for the time being, and possibly have a generic help page somewhere covering the most useful "Special" pages (e.g. What Links Here). Mittfh 21:21, October 9, 2010 (UTC) So, "X Author has written concerning Y1 Character...Y5 Character, and is credited with the following stories and articles"? Something like that? As you can see I'm into not having the characters linked to the author categories. But you throw me with the help page, I'm not seeing how that ties into this discussion; not tying into this discussion, a page with explanations about the various special pages might be an idea, I just putzed around to find out what they did.JohnBobMead 03:27, October 13, 2010 (UTC) Rereading the State of the Wiki thread, I came across what seems to be the first mention of doing Author categories, by Sir Lee. Seems the original idea did include adding author categories to the most solid characters, based on who's writing about them. And I admit that doing it that way requires less effort than my proposal to standardize by listing the characters in the category text; easier to add the category on the character page than going to the author category and modifying that, as an additional page being edited.JohnBobMead 11:56, October 15, 2010 (UTC) Well, I'm in favor of pretty much any consistent standard, whatever it may be. So who of the characters mentioned above should go into Bek's category? At the moment it's Reach, Seraphim and She-Beast which doesn't particularly make sense. If Lancer for E. E. Nalley is the lower threshold at least everyone in the list above before the Anti-Paladin (except perhaps the less obvious Spy Kids) should be in IMO.Addiab 19:05, October 15, 2010 (UTC) One cut-off is how important the character is; I know, that's a subjective judgement call. And discount Diane's character-napping tendencies, when determining author/character relationships; her output swamps the field. How central to various stories. I'd place the line at the Spy Kids, not the Wild Pack; they haven't been that central.JohnBobMead 15:43, October 16, 2010 (UTC) Controlled by seperate from Created by? I think that it should be noted who controls who and who created who. An example would be Vox. Vox was created by Bek (as well as 3,142 other characters), yet Diane is the one to ask questions about regarding 'nessa. Most of the SO's (Except Feral and Hank, who either have a different Author (inactive as she is) or doesn't have an author, yet has been given to another author to keep warm until someone rises to the challenge) Some characters may be easy to note who controls them (The majority of the SO's), while others may not be ( Zenith, Sahar and Shrike rise to mind).NocturnalKnight 09:56, June 18, 2010 (UTC) Uniformity and consistency of description There seem to be two text forms being used: :Bek D. Corbin is one of the canon authors and 'owns' the characters of Chaka, Beltane, Seraphim, She-Beast, Reach, the Three Little Witches and Foxfire. and :These are the characters and stories E. E. Nalley is responsible for. The first places 'owned' characters in the category description, the second implies it would show up via category tags in the respective character pages. I'd actually push for something along the lines of: :Bek D. Corbin is one of the canon authors and 'owns' the characters of Chaka, Beltane, Seraphim, She-Beast, Reach, the Three Little Witches and Foxfire. These are the stories and articles she is responsible for. That way the major characters are listed, and what the category should be used for is made clear.JohnBobMead 17:06, October 9, 2010 (UTC)